A chest freezer may be a chest freezer for cooling food at a cooling temperature higher than 0° C. or a so-called deep freezer for cooling food at a temperature below 0° C. The chest freezer is in particular a commercial chest freezer which may often have a length of several meters up to more than 10 m. The present invention primarily relates to a so-called “island freezer” that is accessible from two opposite access sides. Such chest freezers often have a transverse dimension of 1 to 3 meters from one access side to the other.
To reduce heat introduction into the cooling chamber, the chest body is covered with a covering hood having transparent sliding lids. Such a chest freezer including a covering hood is described in EP 0 769 262 A1. The covering hood has transparent sliding lids slidably supported in two tracks offset in height, wherein the sliding lids are each slidable in parallel with the access sides. Although it is possible to slide two or even more sliding lids of one longitudinal side over each other, the cooling chamber below the sliding lids which are slid over each other is then not accessible from above.
EP 1 332 698 A1 describes a chest freezer with a covering hood which has a plurality of multi-track rail profiles spanning the cooling chamber in the transversal direction, i.e., transversely to the two access sides. Two adjacent rail profiles are part of a respective arrangement of three sliding lids, wherein the central pane is fixed in a stationary manner at the rail profile, and the two sliding lids at the edges can each be slid to the center below the central pane arranged at the highest level. Access to the cooling chamber in the chest freezer is thereby always possible from both access sides. It is not possible to access the chest body from above in the middle between the two access sides since the central pane is stationary.